Songs of praise the angels sang

James Montgomery’s theme ‘songs of praise’ occurs once in stzs 1 and 4 and twice in each of the others; it begins the first 2 and comes in the last line of the remaining 4. Another textual pattern is that its 1st half deals with the angelic praise of God in heaven, the 2nd with the earthly human response; the final lines unite the 2, although the usual form of stz 6 (as here) is not Montgomery’s original. The hymn was published in the 8th edn of Thomas Cotterill’s A Selection of Psalms and Hymns in 1819. The book’s 1st edn had appeared in 1810, proving both controversial and popular, and consequently historic, since it prepared the way for hymn-singing to be legally recognised in the Church of England. This hymn is headed ‘God worthy of all praise’; in the author’s own collections of 1825 and 1853 the heading is ‘Glory to God in the Highest—Luke 2:13[-14]’ The opening of the hymn is based on Job 38:7; the precise phrase ‘songs of praise’ appears only at Neh 12:46 in English Bible versions, though Psalm 40:3 is one of many texts which come close. The most notable of the hymnbooks using the words in a title is that first edited by Percy Dearmer in 1925.

The tune MONKLAND is preferred here to LÜBECK (846), CULBACH, or NORTHAMPTON which was written for these words; it is also associated with John Milton’s text which prompted H W Baker’s; see the note to 911. It was published in the Moravian Hymn Tunes of the United Brethren edited by John Lees in 1824, appropriately set to What good news the angels bring. The melody can be traced back to ‘Fahre fort, fahre fort’ from Freylinghausen’s 1704 collection, but the attribution to John Antes derives from an undated Moravian book c1800, A Collection of hymn tunes chiefly composed for private amusement by John Antes. If Antes adapted the tune from Freylinghausen, so did Lees from Antes and John Wilkes from Lees. Wilkes was organist at Monkland parish church near Lees’ home at Leominster; the A&M editor Henry Williams Baker was vicar of Monkland. But the Wilkes whose dates are given in Praise! should probably yield his place to another John Wilkes who died in 1882 (so Wesley Milgate in Songs of the People of God, 1985 edn; cf Historical Companion to Hymns A&M, 1962, and Bernard Massey in HSB174 p6). This involved but not untypical outline of the history of a simple tune illustrates how uncertain or ambiguous some attributions can be.

b Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland 1771, d Sheffield 1854. His father John was converted through the ministry of John Cennick qv. James, the eldest son, was educated first at the Moravian centre at Fulneck nr Leeds, which expelled him in 1787 for wasting time writing poetry. By this time his parents had left England for mission work in the West Indies. In later life he regularly revisited the school; but having run away from a Mirfield bakery apprenticeship, failed to find a publisher in London, and lost both parents, he served in a chandler’s shop at Doncaster before moving to Sheffield, where from 1792 onwards he worked in journalism. Initially a contributor to the Sheffield Register and clerk to its radical editor, he soon became Asst Editor and (in 1796) Editor, changing its name to the Sheffield Iris. Imprisoned twice in York for his political articles, he was condemned by one jury as ‘a wicked, malicious and seditious person who has attempted to stir up discontent among his Majesty’s subjects’. In his 40s he found a renewed Christian commitment through restored links with the Moravians; championed the Bible Society, Sunday schools, overseas missions, the anti-slavery campaign and help for boy chimney-sweeps, refusing to advertise state lotteries which he called ‘a national nuisance’. He later moved from the Wesleyans to St George’s church and supported Thos Cotterill’s campaign to legalise hymns in the CofE. He wrote some 400, in familiar metres, published in Cotterill’s 1819 Selection and his own Songs of Zion, 1822; Christian Psalmist, or Hymns Selected and Original, in 1825—355 texts plus 5 doxologies, with a seminal ‘Introductory Essay’ on hymnology—and Original Hymns for Public, Private and Social Devotion, 1853. 1833 saw the publication of his Royal Institution lectures on Poetry and General Literature.

In the 1825 Essay he comments on many authors, notably commending ‘the piety of Watts, the ardour of Wesley, and the tenderness of Doddridge’. Like many contemporary editors he was not averse to making textual changes in the hymns of others. He produced several books of verse, from juvenilia (aged 10–13) to Prison Amusements from York and The World before the Flood. Asked which poems would last, he said, ‘None, sir, nothing— except perhaps a few of my hymns’. He wrote that he ‘would rather be the anonymous author of a few hymns, which should thus become an imperishable inheritance to the people of God, than bequeath another epic poem to the world’ on a par with Homer, Virgil or Milton. John Ellerton called him ‘our first hymnologist’; many see him as the 19th century’s finest hymn-writer, while Julian regards his earlier work very highly, the later hymns less so. 20 of his texts including Psalm versions are in the 1916 Congregational Hymnary, and 22 in its 1951 successor Congregational Praise; there are 17 in the 1965 Anglican Hymn Book and 26 in CH. In 2004, Alan Gaunt found 64 of them in current books, and drew attention to one not in use: the vivid account of Christ’s suffering and death in The morning dawns upon the place where Jesus spent the night in prayer. See also Peter Masters in Men of Purpose (1980); Bernard Braley in Hymnwriters 3 (1991) and Alan Gaunt in HSB242 (Jan 2005). Nos.152, 197, 198, 350*, 418, 484, 507, 534, 544, 610, 612, 641, 657*, 897, 959.